EDITORIAL: Bill fails to protect sex workers

A sex trade worker is pictured in downtown Vancouver, B.C., on June 3. A new study published in a British online medical journal concluded that harsher prostitution laws like the one proposed by the Harper government would make it harder for sex workers to get social and health services and legal protection. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Bill C-36, Canada’s new legislation targeting prostitution, is long on politically correct philosophy about preventing the exploitation of people, particularly women, in the sex trade and short on what they really need: protection from being raped, brutalized, beaten up and murdered.

The new law will impose harsher penalties on both sex-trade workers and their customers. For the first time in Canada, says Justice Minister Peter MacKay, prostitution is illegal. He said the bill mainly targets johns and pimps.

But Mr. MacKay should know that outlawing human behaviour, especially one as well established as prostitution, has never yet made it disappear.

Many observers say the new law will make the situation worse.

Indeed, a recent study in British Columbia, where prostitutes in particular were targeted by notorious serial killer Robert William Picton, concluded that harsher laws would make it harder for sex workers to maintain good relations with police officers or obtain social, health and legal services.

The bill, C-36, was drafted after the Supreme Court of Canada threw out the existing law in 2013, arguing that its prohibition of living off the avails of prostitution, operating a bawdy house and communicating to buy or sell sex prevented sex workers from hiring bodyguards and practising together indoors in a safer environment and forced them onto the streets and into more dangerous situations.

The court said the law violated sex workers’ right to security of the person under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In short, the court ruled that life and death issues surrounding the already risky sex trade trump society’s ongoing preoccupation with its nuisance and moral aspects.

The court gave the Harper government a year to come up with new legislation to address the problem, but advocates of sex workers say this bill is worse than the old one.

Based on the so-called Nordic model in Sweden, it prohibits soliciting in any public place where children might be present — in other words, just about everywhere — which will drive prostitution further underground.

Its harsher penalties for johns could prompt patrons to hide their identities from prostitutes.

Sex worker advocate Valerie Scott, one of three women who challenged the old law in court, calls that provision a gift to sexual predators.

“We’ll have to accept calls from blocked numbers. We won’t know who we’re seeing,” she said.

This law, too, will likely be rejected by the top court because it fails to protect people who work in the sex trade. But any challenge will take time, giving the Tories some breathing room on the issue until after the 2015 election.

If Canadians want a law that sweeps the sex trade out of our sight and minds and away from our delicate sensibilities, this one will do the trick.

But if we want a law that will protect sex-trade workers, many of them young and vulnerable, from the Robert William Pictons of this world, it fails miserably.